Today, Apple announced iPhone OS 4.0 with a lot of goodies. Now, at Apple’s announcement they had a “tent pole” of what things they wanted to announce, which were 7 things. Here’s the 7 things that were on the tent pole:

Multitasking

Folders

Enhanced Email

iBooks Support

Enterprise

Game Center

iAd

I will go into detail about those 7 things later in this post, but for now here’s some other details. iPhone OS 4.0 will be released for consumers this summer, so that means that it will be released along side the next generation iPhone and iPod Touch most likely. As for developers they have access to iPhone OS 4.0 as of today and can start testing. One thing Apple didn’t announce (I’m pretty sure they didn’t) if iPhone OS 4.0 will cost. Knowing Apple they will charge for the update, only because it’s a major update. The price will most likely be $9.99 for iPod Touch users, but will be free for iPhones users. The iPad will get iPhone OS 4.0 this fall and the update will be free most likely.

Now, only the iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3rd Generation, and the iPad will be able to have all the features, as for older generations of the iPhone and the iPod Touch they won’t have all the features of iPhone OS 4.0. One of these features that older iPhone and iPod Touch generations will not have is multitasking and a few other features said Steve Jobs today. Those “other features” are not known yet, but hopefully Apple will announce them in the summer when they release the new iPhone and iPod Touch. In iPhone OS 4.0, Apple added the ability to have a home screen background image, just like the iPad, and Apple has also added the ability to zoom 5X with the iPhone’s camera. Pictures of the announcement are at the bottom of this post. Now onto more details of the 7 tent pole things Apple announced today.

UPDATE: The iPod Touch 1st Generation will not be supported in this update.

#1 Multitasking –First off, Apple announced that iPhone OS 4.0 will have multitasking (FINALLY), but there’s a catch: multitasking will only be for audio streaming, VoIP, and GPS apps. Now, this seems confusing to me from reading from various sources, but to the best of my ability (and knowledge) that multitasking will be only for certain apps, however, I can be wrong. This “multitasking” is not true multitasking like on a computer, this “multitasking” saves the state of the app then lets you switch to and from apps that are in that are in that “saved” state. Non-the-less, this “multitasking” is better than no multitasking at all. Here’s a video of the multitasking in action:

#2 Folders – Apple also announced that iPhone OS 4.0 will have “Folders” for you to hold apps inside. Each folder can contain 12 apps, which brings the total number of apps you can have on your home screen to 2,160 apps in all. Now, you can label/name each of your folders, I’m not sure if there’s a limited number of folders you can have (such as 10 folders no matter what). This is a nice feature which will help organizing your home screen, especially if you have a lot of games on your iDevice.

#3 Enhanced Mail App – The third thing Apple announced today was an enhanced mail app, which will include will have a unified inbox, multiple exchange, you can also open attachments in apps, and threaded messages. This “unified inbox” will help solve the problem of having multiple e-mail accounts on your iDevice.

#4 iBooks Support – We sure didn’t see this coming (not) in iPhone OS 4.0 Apple has added iBooks support, which is Apple’s e-book store. Apple has also added the feature to wirelessly sync books between platforms as well. This iBooks support is nice, especially if you have an iPad and a iPhone and/or a iPod Touch, however, reading on the iPad’s bigger screen is more convenient.

#5 Enterprise – Apple has also added new features in Enterprise in iPhone OS 4.0, the new features include:

Better data protection

Mobile device management

Wireless app distribution

Support for multiple Exchange accounts

Exchange Server 2010

New VPN options.

So basically, to sum it up, Enterprise is more secure now than what it was before.

#6 Game Center – Apple has also announced their new Social Gaming Network: Game Center. Now, with this Game Center Social Gaming Network, I wonder what this means for all those other 3rd party Social Gaming Networks, such as Plus+, Crystal, Gameloft Live, OpenFeint, and others. Another thing that making me curious, is will Apple force all of these apps with the third party Social Gaming Networks to use Apple’s Game Center? This should be interesting on how this plays out. In Game Center you can invite friends, there’s also matchmaking, leader-boards, and achievements.

#7 iAd – Today Apple also announced its new mobile advertising framework: iAd. Before Apple’s iAd developers used AdMob, which is owned by Google, to place ads into their applications. The revenue split between Apple and the developer is 40-60, Apple gets the 40% and the developer gets 60%. iAd features interactive ads, ads within the app, ads built into iPhone OS, and Apple is to sell and host the ads. Something nice about iAd is that if you tap on the app, you don’t have to leave the application you are in unlike Google’s AdMob which makes you exit the app and launches Mobile Safari. Another nice thing is that in iAd you can include anything in the ad such as a game, a video, basically anything. Now, all the ads must be built in HTML5 (Ha, take that Adobe!), unlike using Adobe’s Web Flash.

Overall this should be an interesting update, and there’s still yet the announcement of the next generation iPhone and iPod Touch to look forward to this year, plus Apple will talk even more about iPhone OS 4.0 as well then too. So here’s a quick recap of the event:

Multitasking

Folders

Drag Drop UI, Intelligent naming, now you can have 2160 apps on iPhone

Enhanced Email App

Unified inbox, Multiple exchange, Threaded messages & Fast switching!

iBooks Support

Enterprise

Game Center

iAd

Home screen background image

5X Camera zoom

iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd Generation will get all the features

iPhone 3G (older generations too) and iPod Touch 1st and 2nd Generation will not get multitasking a few other features as well